posted
i remember about two weeks ago that the second part of pastwatch was coming out in late december. I havent seen it in the stores or on online stores. does anybody have any information on the release date or where i can find it????
Posts: 1 | Registered: Jan 2009
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posted
Amazon has been claiming the sequel is coming out in a few months for three solid years now -- they just change the date every so often.
It has not yet been written. Amazon's data is incorrect (as a shockingly high percentage of its data is).
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The first time I stumbled upon a site that talked about the two sequels to Pastwatch, it talked about them as though they were books currently in existence. I was quite excited, but also astonished that these books had both been written and I hadn't even heard about them.
It took me a few minutes of research before I realized that the website owner was indulging in a bit of wishful thinking.
Posts: 324 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
I would rather see the final Alvin, before seeing a sequel to a book that did not end with any cliffhangers.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
If you go to www.geekson.com, and check out their podcast archive, episode 18 contains an excellent OSC interview. Master Alvin is one of the things he talks about.
Posts: 1080 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote: The Pastwatch books aren't a series like the others, because the first Pastwatch DID the "change the past" thing, and given the rules of the universe there, it UNDID Pastwatch. So there can't be sequels - only prequels!
The Flood story is already complete before the beginning of Redemption of Columbus; and the Garden of Eden story will take place (that is, the Pastwatch part of it) WHILE the Columbus expedition is being prepared, so that the things they learn are NOT included in the summation of human knowledge that they take with them into the past.
quote: I WILL go back to the flood in one of the Pastwatch books, and to the GArden of Eden in another. The latter will probably be so offensive to everybody that my poetic license will be revoked. So Kristine urges me to make that the LAST book I write before dying - since it will probably be the last book in my career in any case <grin>.
posted
Oh, yeah. Now I really really want to read the Garden of Eden one.
I love when he stands everybody's assumptions on their heads and still tells a compelling, believable story.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I just finished reading Pastwatch. Let me state that I have loved most everything I have ever read of OSC. I was fascinated by the concept and plot of this book. But when I finished the book I realized how angry it made me. Why is that? Then I realized how the author himself so completely missed the point of his own story. The book is so well written, could it be he did not really research the history, no, I see that he did do lots of research, and he even made mention (only twice) in the book of one of the major world crimes of that day. So how could he have missed mentioning so blatant a crime. Such a world changing and life shattering event for an entire race of people living in that day in western europe, surely it deserved some compassion, some mention, some place of recognition in the listing of world injustices? How many of you are clueless also? Let me explain it & Mr. Card I hope you read this! The main characters are presented to us as "Humans" i.e. - to differentiate as did Mr. C.S. Lewis from those people who lacked certain characteristics by which we humans would really want to define ourselves: compassion, personal honesty and accountability, acknowledgement of correct action before a higher power. And these people in their research of the past find such abhorrent behavior in the past that they feel compelled to change all of human history. So they spend years, some of them most of their lifetimes, studying the past for the proper time to inject their changes. Years of a certain era are studied over and over again. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella in the years prior to 1492. How is it then, that these humans, these characters of compassion could have missed the entire Spanish Inquisition? Is the torture and murder, forced conversions, complete abrogation of all personal rights, and finally robbery of all real property and expulsion of an entire race of people so unimportant in the world scheme that it can be dismissed by a single sentence: "She had long pressed for the purification of Spain by removing all non-Christians; it made her impatient that Ferdinand refused to let her expel the Jews until after the Moors were broken." (Sorry Jews, nothing personal you know, I just want a pure state to live in and you polute it!) Mr. Card in essence what you have said to the world with your book is that this race of people did not deserve compassion from "Humans". You dismissed them out of hand when one of the worst crimes against that race took place in the very place and time in which you focused your book. You spend quite a bit of time developing Mr. Columbus' character, and in the time of his "redemption" in Haiti he defines appropriate behavior between Humans as "Christian". How narrow minded. As if the doctrines he realizes are really important were originally & only espoused by the Christian religion. Mr. Card, you missed the point, entirely. And by your missing it, you showed the world that beautiful utopian Spain of 1522 as a wonderful place to be. Did you not realize it was Judenfree? Hitler would have been quite comfortable there. By the way, historians are compiling credible evidence that Mr. Columbus was most likely Jewish, how twisted is that!
Posts: 1 | Registered: Apr 2009
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posted
Cardless, I think the Pastwatch dilemma was that they would get one - and only one - shot at changing the past. Once they pull the trigger, they are erased from the future and the only way anything similar can be done again is if the new timeline spawns a new Pastwatch.
I doubt that Card (or the characters) missed the Inquisition, or any other large scale bad events in history. I think they simply concluded that altering the course of New World colonization was the best opportunity to make a big difference, and came up with a reasonably plausible way to make it happen.
I can't tell if you're making the argument that they picked the wrong intervention - one that was less effective at avoiding harms - or if you're saying they should have done something about the inquisition at the same time. Either way, I'd like to hear what you think the intervention would have looked like. How could they have stopped or limited the events of the inquisition by doing something similar to what they did in the story as written?
Short of writing a fan-fic version of the story, it might be hard to really flesh it out, but I thought you might want to expand on your thoughts here.
I would also like to point out that equating the choices made within Pastwatch to completely dismissing all other suffering, or to idealizing 15th century Spain, is pretty silly. You can make your argument about what the better choices would have been without making the leap to callous disregard for human suffering.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
"Cardless"... everyone knows of the Spanish Inquisition. It was frankly one out of many religious tyrannies, the Jewish expulsion it orchestrated is one out of many expulsions of people of other religions, both Jewish and others. And stopping it (even if you can come up with a plausible plan to do so) would have altered nothing at all outside Spain itself.
Which is a tiny tiny nation, and not at all important compared to the discovery of an entire continent or two.
"Hitler would have been quite comfortable there."
Are you intentionally going for stupid statement?
No, he wouldn't have been. Strange though it may seem to you, hatred of Jews isn't the sole defining characteristic of Hitler, Nazism IN ITS ENTIRETY is his defining characteristic -- and the 16th century society as described in the book was even less Nazist than our current society is if we consider e.g. that non-white people were in even more important and powerful positions globally than they are currently; that there indeed existed more religious freedom than is currently the case in many quarters of the world.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Cardless: And these people in their research of the past find such abhorrent behavior in the past that they feel compelled to change all of human history.
They weren't seeking to undo abhorrent behaviour. They were seeking to undo events that lead to the demise of humanity. And they were seeking the point in time when the introduction of the smallest change would have the greatest desired effect. I specifically remember one character saying they weren't looking for blame, they were looking for cause.
Posts: 1080 | Registered: Apr 2006
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